Theory of Computation (ToC) is fundamental but notoriously challenging for undergraduates, often resulting in high dropout rates and low engagement. In this paper we argue that incorporating gamification and carefully chosen analogies can significantly improve student comprehension and motivation in ToC courses. Drawing on constructivist and experiential learning theories, we present a position that game-based activities and concrete analogical models help students actively construct understanding of abstract concepts. We provide evidence from prior literature and propose revised games and analogies for each major ToC topic: regular and context-free languages, Turing machines, decidability. For each topic, we outline an in-class gamified activity or analogy that leverage gamified or analogical learning and provide summaries of these activities and their pedagogical usage. Our position is that these approaches are pedagogically effective and should be adopted to enhance ToC instruction.

Fri 20 Feb

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10:40 - 12:00
Teaching Computing Through Play: From Pointers to ParallelismPapers at Meeting Room 103-104
Chair(s): Jake Renzella University of New South Wales, Sydney
10:40
20m
Talk
DeliverC: Teaching Pointers through GenAI-Powered Game-Based Learning
Papers
Wyatt Petula Pennsylvania State University, Anushcka Joshi Pennsylvania State University, Peggy Tu Pennsylvania State University, Amrutha Somasundar Pennsylvania State University, Suman Saha PC
11:00
20m
Talk
Gamified Learning and Instructional Analogies for Theory of Computing Courses
Papers
Robert Belcher United States Military Academy, Wesley Yeatman United States Military Academy, Ryan Dougherty United States Military Academy
11:20
20m
Talk
Parallel X: Redesigning of a Parallel Programming Educational Game with Semantic Foundations and Transfer Learning
Papers
Devon McKee University of California at Santa Cruz, Zhiyu Lin University of California Santa Cruz, Boyd Fox Independent, Jiahong Li University of California Santa Cruz, Jichen Zhu IT University of Copenhagen, Magy Seif El-Nasr University of California Santa Cruz, Tyler Sorensen Microsoft Research and University of California at Santa Cruz